Hot Time In The City: The First Frieze Art Fair Arrives in LA

Founded 28 years ago as an art magazine, Frieze has morphed into a worldwide event, with art fairs in London and New York. Now, with its arrival in Los Angeles, the first Frieze LA cements the City of Angels as a player on the world’s art stage. Freize LA will take place February 14-17 against the iconic backdrop of the Paramount Pictures Studios lot on Melrose with a bespoke structure designed by Kulapat Yantrasast.

In addition, a section entitled Frieze Projects, an immersive site-specific program of artists commissions, overseen by independent curator Ali Subotnick, corrals innovative new work from a group that includes Lisa Anne Auerbach, Sarah Cain, Catharine Czudej, Paul McCarthy, Tino Sehgal, Eugenia P. Butler, Corazon del Sol, and Shahryar Nashat. Set among the movie lot’s iconic New York Street sets, it promises to create a disorienting funhouse atmosphere that juxtaposes an artificial New York City within the reality of Los Angeles.

Frieze Talks, which launches ahead of the fair, is divided into two parts. The first, set at LAXART, riffs off the classic game show “Name That Tune”. Artists, including Lauren Halsey, Jim Shaw and Frances Stark, whose work has a relationship to sound, will, over the course of four evenings be tested by professor and music critic Josh Kun and curator Hamza Walker with a series of sonic fragments meant to thrill, confound, provoke, and entertain. The second part will take place during the fair in the Sherry Lansing theatre. Architected as a series of conversations between artists and their peers, it promises to provide a uncensored peek behind the scenes at artists practices and inspirations. Some of the featured creatives will be Kristy Edmunds in conversation with Susan Nimoy; architect Frank Gehry in conversation with Maja Hoffman and Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Michael Govan and Naima Keith and Andrew Perchuk paired with Charlotte Burns

Some of the not to be missed events include Lisa Anne Auerbach’s psychic art advisor, a tongue-in-cheek merging of two professions, art advisor and psychic, which will dispense commercial and creative advice relating to the business of art; a new series of iconic stickers from Barbara Kruger, which will provide a kind of stepping stone pathway through the fair; and the LA Walk of Art on Saturday, February 16th, twelve self-guided routes across Los Angeles, exploring neighborhoods of galleries and museums as well as places to eat and shop.